There was really something for everyone in the New York Times's Sunday exposé on the White House message machine—consiracy, corruption, media bashing, Orwellian manipulation, and a veiled reference to The Manchurian Candidate. Fox News critics got special lovin'.

The Times examination found that most of the ex-military types serving as presumably independent and unbiased on-air analysts, have actually been echoing the Bush Administration's talking points as "Message force multipliers." At the same time, they've often secretly worked as board members and lobbyists for defense contractors competing for massive war contracts, and their chumminess and special access with senior level officials and news organizations alike made them the perfectly corrupt insiders. Dick Cheney's favorite channel, Fox News, was found to be one of the worst offenders, often hiring four times the number of corrupt analysts to paint rosy portraits of disastrous Bush blunders. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a key player in the shady operation.

If you floated this kind of thing at a cocktail conversation before Sunday, you'd be called a liberal crank. Or Randi Rhodes.